Before 1990, under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, external migration was almost unknown to Romanian citizens. Getting a passport to cross the border was difficult and controlled by the authorities, while the very few foreigners visiting the country were also strictly monitored. The country's virtual isolation shaped people's fundamentally positive attitude towards foreigners: they represented a longed-for freedom of movement and contact with the outside world, which many people welcomed. This reinforced a self-image among the general population that Romanians were very hospitable and that visitors were welcome in the country. However, for most Romanians, it was almost unthinkable in everyday life that someone from abroad would visit the country.
The long and difficult post-communist transition after Ceaușescu's fall in 1990 from a planned to a market economy led to inflation, unemployment, and economic hardship, pushing Romanian nationals to seek a better life abroad and making Romania a country of emigration. According to the OECD, in 2017, the Romanian diaspora was among the largest in the world, with about 6 million citizens living abroad, as assessed by the Ministry of External Affairs.
This mass emigration, coupled with the drop in fertility and accelerated population ageing, shrank the size of the active population and made employers look for a new labour force abroad. Therefore, any attempt to understand immigration to Romania and general attitudes towards immigrants should consider that incoming migration fills a labour-market gap and that Romanians' main experience with migration is through relatives and friends living abroad.
Labour and asylum migration: non-European immigrants
However, the population of Third Country Nationals (TCN) residing on Romanian territory, although not very large, has a complex composition. About 40% of the immigrants living in Romania at the end of 2023 were citizens of Nepal, Türkiye, Sri Lanka, India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Syria, and Iran. People from the latter two countries came to Romania seeking protection, while all others came as migrant workers.
Labour migration has been the primary source of immigration to Romania since 2018. Before that, education was the main reason for moving to Romania. As shown in Figure 1, since 2019, the number of resident permits granted for employment has exceeded those granted for education, while the pace of growth has been very high, from 10,000 work permits in 2019 to over 80,000 in 2024. The outcome is an exponential increase in the stock of migrants from less than 70,000 in 2018 to almost 240,000 in 2024, according to the data in Figure 2. Thus, in less than a decade, the stock of immigrants grew three times, with the prospect of keeping the same pace for the coming years, as the Government has set the quota of work permits to 100,000 a year since 2021.
The vast majority of those coming to Romania are men of active age (between 20 and 50 years old) who arrive in Romania already holding a two-year work contract. Most of them are employed in construction, logistics, and services and live in the most developed urban areas, like Bucharest, Cluj, and Timișoara. Although this is a regulated migration, which should not raise issues like economic exclusion and social marginalisation, the high concentration of the immigrant population in only a few urban centres increases their visibility. Combined with perceived cultural differences from the native population, this heightened visibility makes them easy targets for xenophobic and racist arguing movements.
The number of asylum applications also grew, from 1,620 in 2014 to 10,157 in 2023, according to data from the General Inspectorate for Immigration. The largest share of asylum seekers in 2023 came from Bangladesh (27 percent), Syria (19 percent), Pakistan (12 percent), Nepal (8 percent), and Sri Lanka (5 percent). The nationality of asylum seekers closely matches that of economic migrants, suggesting that most applicants arrived in Romania with a work contract and a regular visa and later applied for asylum to avoid extradition for an irregular stay. But the share of the approved asylum requests is modest (16.7 percent in 2023).
Regarding asylum migration, Romania remains a transit country for those seeking to reach Western Europe – therefore, the number of those staying in the country was not very high. Moreover, attempts to cross irregularly the border from Serbia to Romania, as part of the so-called Balkan route, dropped by 67 percent in 2024 compared to 2023, following Croatia’s admission to the Schengen area, according to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles. This made it possible to reach the EU and Western Europe more quickly. In 2024, Romania reported only 259 irregular crossings from Serbia, while about 2,400 foreign nationals were detained while trying to irregularly cross the national border.
Asylum seekers are accommodated in dedicated centers managed by the General Inspectorate for Immigration, and they are entitled to receive financial support, access to healthcare, and legal assistance while their application is checked. Asylum applications may be submitted to the General Inspectorate for Immigration or to other authorities, such as the Border Police or the local police, who should register the application within 3 days. The first step of the asylum assessment consists of identity checks and an interview with the case officer. A decision should be issued within 30 days, and the applicant has 10 days to appeal. A return decision accompanies the rejection of the application.
Labour migration, asylum seekers and irregular migration, the last one referring to ‘undocumented’ or ‘unauthorised’ migration according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), brought in non-European ethnic groups. Although visible in the public space, they are not a concern for most of the population (yet). On the contrary, they are seen mostly as an asset amid the labour force shortage. Compared with other EU member states, immigration was never a controversial or polarising issue on the public agenda. In April 2025, only eight percent of Romanians considered immigration a major problem for the EU, compared to the sample average of 18 percent in the EU. Similarly, five percent ranked immigration among national priorities, while the sample average was 14 percent. In the same vein, the reform of the Common European Asylum System was never an item of the political agenda, not even during the campaign for the European Elections in 2024. In spite of the lack of salience of migration on the public agenda, the right-wing extremist political parties started to target non-European immigrants as part of their xenophobic and ultra-nationalist ideology. Several incidents reported in 2025 by media point to the active instigation of hate crimes heated up by the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), the main political force on the right-wing of the political spectrum. In August 2025, an immigrant from Bangladesh was physically assaulted by a 20-year-old man in Bucharest. In November 2025, the same scenario happened near Bucharest, when a woman attacked a TCN.
War refugees from Ukraine
Since 24 February 2022, over three million Ukrainian war refugees have crossed the Romanian border. However, only about 197,000 of them decided to temporarily settle in the country due to the language barrier and the greater appeal of Western European countries. Even though their numbers fluctuate with the season and the evolution of the war, they remain the largest group of Third Country Nationals residing in the country in 2025 and are nearly equal to the total number of all other TCNs. Moreover, the ongoing war makes their presence salient to Romanian citizens, playing an important role in shaping public opinion.
Despite the first very positive reaction of the Romanians faced with a massive movement of incoming war refugees, over time, attitudes shifted from solidarity and a willingness to provide support to neutral attitudes and even hostility, as shown by survey data. According to the EuroBarometer surveys that regularly monitor public opinion among EU citizens regarding the war in Ukraine, in April 2022 Romanians did not differ from the EU average in their support for humanitarian, financial, and military supplies to the neighbouring country and its citizens fleeing their homes due to the war. Whereas in 2022 over 80 percent of the Romanians reported positive attitudes towards financial and humanitarian assistance to the refugees, after three years 63 percent of the population held similar opinions. At the EU level, the drop in support for Ukrainian refugees dropped only from 80 percent to 76 percent.
The raising of negative attitudes towards Ukrainian refugees has several causes. In the first 7 months of 2025, Romania reported an increase in the budgetary deficit, prompting the government to cut public spending, fire some public employees and raise VAT. The difficult economic situation reinforced the belief that refugees received more benefits than Romanian nationals in need. Additionally, the significant rise of the right-wing extremist parties in recent years contributes to the reinforcement of the prejudices against this group. Moreover, as the parties’ orientation is openly favourable to Russia, the refugees are in the spot of the extremist movements, making them an easy target for the anti-Western and anti-EU propaganda.
Good immigrants, bad immigrants?
The two cases – Ukrainians and other TCN – presented here tell a story about how public opinion in Romania views foreign ethnic groups coming to Romania. In both cases, the attitudes of the population are shaped by rational calculation of its own interests. While TCN like labour migrants from South-East Asia and partially asylum seekers are seen as a solution to the labour force shortage and therefore welcome, the war refugees from Ukraine lost a significant share of the support granted by Romanian nationals when economic issues negatively impacted households’ budgets.
Only extremists are openly against both groups. Public opinion does not pay much attention to immigration, considering poverty and the lack of economic resources to be more relevant for the national agenda, as shown by the EuroBarometer 2025. The drop in support for war refugees from Ukraine shows that acceptance of migrants, as everywhere else in the world, are linked to the economic situation in the country. However, after more than three years of war, over 60 percent of Romanian nationals still agree with providing support for the Ukrainian refugees, while the refugees themselves do not feel discriminated, according to the research conducted by IOM. So far, the majority of the population is not opposed to immigrants, regardless of where they are coming from or the reasons for their immigration, but the danger of anti-immigration sentiments is still present.